Peptone’s c-Myc antagonist program is advanced with UCL Cancer Institute and Prof. Marc Mansour. See Partnering and Collaborations on the pipeline page for detail.
Discovery
c-Myc antagonist
A discovery-stage program developing an antagonist of the intrinsically disordered transcription factor c-Myc, advanced with UCL Cancer Institute disease biology.
- Target
- c-Myc
- Modality
- Small molecule
- Indication
- MYC-driven solid tumors
- Stage
- Discovery
Target
c-Myc is a transcription factor that is disordered outside of its complex with MAX and is deregulated across a broad range of cancers. Direct pharmacological control of c-Myc has been considered undruggable because it presents no classical binding pocket.
Approach
Peptone applies its disorder-first platform to characterise the conformational ensemble of c-Myc and to search for binders that disrupt its productive interactions, extending the platform beyond aggregation targets into transcriptional biology.
Preclinical
Discovery-stage work focuses on target validation and early hit finding against defined disordered regions. Mechanism-of-action studies are advanced with Prof. Marc Mansour at UCL Cancer Institute in MYC-driven leukaemia and transcriptional models.
Development Plan
The program is run with academic collaboration on disease biology and MoA, so chemical series are pressure-tested in cutting-edge models before later preclinical investment.